gsub regex into a string

Question

Given a string like "this is the {{any}} string" , I'd like to gsub (or similar) {{any}} with /.*/ and then use that entire string as my matcher.

I've tried, as you could guess, "this is the {{any}} string".gsub("{{any}}", /.*/) , which gives the error:

TypeError: no implicit conversion of Regexp into String

Answer 1

Try this

string = "this is the {{any}} string"
regexp = Regexp.new(Regexp.quote(string).gsub("\\{\\{any\\}\\}", '.*'))

How does this work?

• Regexp.quote escapes the string such that it matches verbatim
• gsub replaces {{any}} , which is by now escaped, with .*
• Regexp.new creates a regexp